“Well, I’m not anymore.”
“You could have suffocated.”
It’s only then that I notice his voice, which is scraping its lowest register, and his hands, which are raw and red in the evening light. Some of his nails are bleeding.
My thoughts scatter. “You dug me out?”
He ignores this. “How’s your head?”
“You dug me out,” I emphasize, “with yourhands.”
“Your head?” he presses.
“It’s fine.” (It’s not fine.)
“What about your vision? Any dizziness? Bright spots?”
I frown. “Are you a medic now, too?”
“You should be glad I care to study beyond my required field,” he snaps, then looks sharply away. “I’ve never seen anyone take down a sand cephalopod,” he continues in more controlled tones. “Not with a ray gun.”
“You’ve underestimated the ray gun.”
“I’ve underestimated you.”
Silence. I can’t tell if it’s my head injury that’s causing the air to thicken around us, or something else. Lament opens his mouth, and I have the oddest thought he’s about to say my name again, but he only goes, “I got the radio working.” He breaks our gaze once more, and I swear I can feel it: the harsh, swift cut of that connection. “I’ve called for help.”
It isn’t long before a broad fixed-wing medicraft touches down beside us and a host of medics emerge, including an ethereal being with six knobbyhorns adorning her skull and a rash of glowing white freckles across her face. This is Illiviamona, the Sixth’s chief medic.
“I did not plan on meeting you like this,” Illiviamona says in a distant, watery voice.
“Me either,” I mumble.
“I had thought the circumstances would be much worse,” she continues wistfully, turning her enormous black eyes skyward. “More blood. And fire.”
“Ah.”
“Not to fear.” Her mouth splits in what I can only assume is a smile. “There is still time.”
Illiviamona checks me over with calm efficiency, asking many of the same questions Lament asked, laying her hand on my arm, my head. My body grows numb at the places she touches, and I get an unbalanced feeling in my stomach, like I’ve descended a flight of stairs and missed the last step.
“Nothing is broken,” she concludes, “but you have a concussion and a torn labrum, which will require surgery.”
“But it doesn’t hurt,” I complain.
She gives another one of her strange, open-mouthed smiles. “Yet.”
We take the medicraft back to Skyhub Space Station (with me strapped to a stretcher while Lament gets to ride passenger, damn him). The craft zips us over the giant suspended ring of identical detachments before coming to land on The Hub’s centermost flight deck. From there, I’m carted past rows of visiting spacecraft, under the noses of curious onlookers, and toward the space station’s general hospital.
As the team of medics rolls me under an aropolymer awning and up a frankly precarious ramp, I lose sight of Lament. Which is fine, it’s fine, except I can’t stop craning my neck to look for him, even as I’m wheeled into one of the inpatient rooms and Illiviamona injects my arm with something that makes me feel both marvelously clearheaded and sharply aware of what hurts. Which is everything. The pounding in my skull hasseemingly spread to the rest of me, making it feel as though my body is ten times its normal size, and my shoulder has begun to ache in earnest, the pain of the injury lancing down my arm whenever I move. So I don’t move. I lie there on the crinkly hospital bed like a dead fish, staring up at the diffuse overhead lights and trying not to wonder where Lament went, or how badly I’m injured, or how much trouble we’re in.
Illiviamona calls for assistance and a new pair of medics arrive, both of whom are horn-headed and freckle-faced like her. I try to remember the name of their species. Are they Lellinas? Lellenials? Would I be able to remember this piece of information if I didn’t have a concussion? What evenisa concussion?
I’m starting to spiral a little, my pulse picking up, my breath coming short and quick. One of the medics must notice, because she comes to lay her hand on my shoulder. As before, the limb goes numb. It’s unpleasant, but not entirely unwelcome. The sudden absence of pain is enough to settle me from catapulting into a full-blown panic attack.
“We will use a cartilage regrowth solution to repair your labrum,” Illiviamona informs me, producing a long, threatening-looking needle. “It is minimally invasive and should only take a few minutes. But it is uncomfortable.”
How uncomfortable?is what I mean to ask, but what comes out is, “Where’s Lament?”
